The Best Thundereggs from the Eibonvale Gallery
Mexico can be a chaotic place in terms of IDs – many thundereggs can be vaguely identified or not identified at all. So it is always interesting when a new location turns up. These Del Sur specimens have a somewhat unfamiliar look for Mexico as well, with a very smooth matrix and simple agate.
I have been sorting out my vast stock of rocks recently, aiming to sell off a lot of them and get back some kind of control of things. I have been selling liberally over on the Thunderegg Shop Facebook Group – but this has also been a chance to look through all my specimens that are not yet on the gallery and decide which ones I would keep. And then finally upload them! These are the ones that really caught me, including some very unusual locations and some nice specimens of more familiar ones. Below are some of my favourite ones.
See the whole German gallery here: http://www.thundereggs.co.uk/germany.html
Wieda Thunderegg – A Crisp Specimen From a Rare Location
Altersbach – Rarish Location Known for it’s Flaming Hydrothermal Agate.
Nesselhof Thunderegg – Candycane!
Nesselhof thunderegg – Deep Red
Drusenborn Thunderegg – Rarely Seen Solid Agate
Querbitzsch – a Beautiful Specimen of the White Ghosts of the Kaolin Mines
Waldeneck – The Classic Baden Baden Location
Gröppendorf – The ‘Other’ White Ghost of the Kaolin Mines
Brandtkopf
Hölle (Gehlberg) – one of the Quiet Relatives of the Famous Felsenschlag.
Oberhof – a Rare New Location from an Urban Building Site!
Spießberg ‘Rote Linie’ – an Unnamed Location in an area that is Being Revealed as Surprisingly Diverse.
Hirschfeld Gravel Pit Thunderegg with a Geology from the Mügeln Area
Hirschfeld Gravel Pit – a Somewhat Less Familiar Geology
A mystery thunderegg from the Zeithin Gravel Pit, because although we know where it was found, the geology that it originated from remains completely different from all known sources, in spite of various enquiries. One of the mysteries of the gravel pits that make them so interesting.
A rare complete specimen from Ochsendrehe, Saxony
Sermuth thunderegg – a very unusual new location from Saxony, Germany.
After a long quiet time, when I have mostly been engaged in selling off some of my huge stock of eggs, I have launched a few more specimens on the gallery.
Burgstall thunderegg with an unusual pseudomorph core.
A fine Dugway thunderegg with some very delicate agate.
A more complex Donnybrook thunderegg with a fair amount going on.
Ochs Ranch / Pony Creek thunderegg – a simple but rather sweet specimen.
A specimen from one of the rarely seen non-public beds on the Richardson Ranch – this one described as a rare and small location “close to the main road”.
Two interesting new locations have been uploaded to the gallery now. I know very little about the first one, save that it is from the Thuringia Forest. In appearance, it is substantially different to anything else I have seen from there. This lcation is simply known as Wasch:
Wasch Thunderegg
Next up is a new Saxony location alongside the white ghosts of the kaolin pits – Börtewitz. And it’s a specimen I am pretty much in love with! The stones that I have seen from here are distinguished from the other locations (Querbitzsch, Gröppendorf etc.) by being much harder and heavier – a solid matrix that takes a shine.
Börtewitz Thunderegg
Located near Bad Sachsa, Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) – a state that provides very few thundereggs compared to some of the others. These are a distinctive location, with beautiful flowbanding and thin bands of sometimes vivid red agate. I have now added a page of them on the gallery, and here are some of the best ones.
Here are three more specimens from Richardson Ranch that are not from any of the familiar beds. As usual, there is only so much I can say about these and the tags consist of little more than rough guides to the area in which they are found. Nevertheless, they provide some new ideas of just what that ranch is capable of producing.
First up is an absolute stunner, in my opinion – and also the most mysterious. This was not from any of the hundred or so locations on the ranch, this was a ‘float egg’ – by which I mean a lost rock just lying on the ground, with all the mystery that entails. You can see this in the very brittle and fractured matrix. The colours here are rather different from anything I have seen before – indeed, this is one of the most beautiful matrixes I have ever seen from this area.
The above specimen is from a small deposit “On the Road to the Opal Bed” and it shows a very clear kinship with the Bed #1 etc. geology in the black splotches.
Lastly is a specimen with a matix that has little kinship with either the Priday type or the Bed #1 etc. type – a smooth brick-red stone that seems to have more in common with Brown Ranch or somewhere like that. This comes from a small deposit “On the Road to the New Ledge Jasper Bed”
There are some more of these obscure Richardson locations still to polish, so keep an eye out for those in the future.
Kind of like the old joke about the buses … you wait hours for one to turn up, then a bunch of them all come along at once! China had been a bit of a blank of the Thunderegg map for a while, with the odd Fire Mountain specimen turning up VERY occasionally and nothing more. But then things suddenly changed. No less that four more locations suddenly appeared on the market, starting with Pujiang a year or so ago … Now, China is on the scene – and now I have got three of the five locations on the gallery as well. The other two to follow. Hopefully they will remain on the scene now because I can tell you, these can be stunning stones and further locations would be extremely exciting.
Click here to see the full china gallery, or see some highlights below.
I have just uploaded some interesting new specimens from Poland to the gallery – some of the greatest Thunderegg locations in the world!
This beautiful specimen is from the closed Nowy Kościół sub-location Wrzynka – one of the few specimens I actually have a bed name for. More striking is the very unusual matrix colour. This is not typical of Wrzynka, or any other sub-location that I am aware of and the ghostly white gives it a very special feeling indeed.
Another Nowy Kościół specimen with a known sub-location – simply described as “The Wood on the Mountain“. As you can see, a complex specimen with a much more familiar matrix.
Next up is something rather more unusual. This one is from the Owczarnia Hills, not far away from Sokolwiecz – presumably a wholly new location to me, which is exciting given how few locations Poland seems to possess.
And lastly, talking of Sokolwiecz, here is one – a substantial upgrade of the location and a fine example of the rich dark colours the area produces.
Lurking somewhere in my boxes is an excellent Gozdno specimen as well, still awaiting polishing. Keep an eye out for that!
Two new locations on the gallery, two fairly new locations in the Thunderegg world. Both of these were discovered by Jason Hinkle with the help of Ed Pieters and both promise to be striking and rather special.
Paintbrush Bed is a simple and attractive location somewhat in the style of Wild Iris and others, sometimes showing some very nice staining of the matrix. The name comes from the huge thickets of Indian Paintbrush flowers among which the eggs were found.
Mountain View is a spectacular new discovery from 2014 in central Oregon. This is a very distinctive bed, marked by a very bright brick red matrix. The shape is often lenticular and the eggs are brittle and sometimes fragmented. The agate tends to be a quiet grey.
There will be more locations from Jefferson coming – including ones from with Richardson Ranch itself. Keep an eye out for those.
January 14, 2020
Eibonvale
Eibonvale Thundereggs Blog 